Friday, 9 May 2014

The Perfect Heresy

The Perfect Heresy. The Cathars
of Languedoc in the 13th Century. Stephen O’Shea. Second edition
published in 2001. Read on Kindle in January 2013.

This review was written on February 12th 2013

In the 11th, 12th
and earlier 13th Centuries the Cathars, otherwise known as the
Albigensian, had become a significant minority of the population of Languedoc
in the South of France and in Northern Spain in Aragon and Catalonia. Languedoc
was at that time independent of the Kings of France. It was annexed to the
Kingdom of France shortly after the campaign against the Cathars had culminated
when the King of France and the French armies had an important if later and less
brutal role in eliminating the heresy.

I first visited Languedoc in
the late summer of 1976 when I was staying with my friend Jacqueline at her
sister Michelle’s house close to Manosque by the Durance tributary of the Rhone.
After a few weeks with Michelle, where I was to write my book Beat Heart
Disease, Jacqueline and I toured the Languedoc region starting from Avignon and going
by Montpellier, Carcassonne and the many other towns of the region extending
almost as far as Toulouse It was a beautiful and evocative part of France and
its peaceful ambience was far removed from that part of the world where such
cruelties, massacres and pogroms took place in the earlier years of the 13th
century.

The Cathars are described by
the author as the members of the most notorious and subservient creed of all times.
The book deals with the policies of the Church and Rome, and the Catholic
clergy and laity, to extirpate the large and increasing numbers of Cathars who
were heretics threatening the tenets of Rome. The brief, violent and largely
successful campaign of about 16 years resolutely sought the extirpation of the
Cathars and of other heresies in the South of France and in Spain. At times the
killings were indiscriminate; the citizens of whole towns and villages were
massacred, a policy evocative of the
earlier massacres which occurred on behalf of Christianity during the first
Crusade. The massacre of the Cathars occurred during the times of Innocent III and
Gregory IX and with their connivance and that of their successors. The Inquisition
was established in the South of France and in Spain shortly after the Cathar
campaign and was to extend and torment Catholics of Europe and Latin America
for centuries to come. And it was the Dominican Order which led the clergy in
its campaign to destroy the Cathars and which was responsible for the
initiation and the continuation of the subsequent Inquisition.

The Cathar symbol of the dove

The Cathars deplored the
cupidity and worldliness of Rome and its clergy. Their communion was apparently
directly with Jesus and God and they denied the role of the sacraments and the
outer secular and political manifestations of the Church. They could only reach
perfection or completeness by living lives of poverty, simplicity and
self-denial. It was up to the individual man or woman to decide whether he or
she was willing to renounce the material world and to adopt a life of tolerance
and self-denial.

They did not care if you treated
others, including Jews and Muslims, as a friend or got into bed before
marriage, giving rise to the comment among their critics that ‘’They could not
commit sin below the waist’’. If they failed to reach perfection in this life, they
were destined to be reborn to the human form to await the perfection of total
self-denial. The God deserving of Cathar worship was a God of light who ruled
the invisible, the ethereal, the spiritual domain

The philosophy of the Cathars
is best described in the first chapter of the book. Just as some of the tenets
of the Catholic Church seem unreal and without logic to me to-day, it seems
that the tenets of the Cathars must have seemed unreal to the fervent believers
of Rome eight centuries ago.

Montségur - the last stonghold of the Cathars.

Despite a distance of eight
centuries, there is quite an extensive literature about the Cathars and their
Perfect Heresy The title owes its description to their philosophy aimed at
achieving perfection in this life and only thus could they reach Godliness in the
next world. This book provides a good review of this so-called Perfect Heresy
and I am left most vividly with the paradox that great masses of people can be
moved by such irrational but apparently harmless beliefs and that others can be
equally irrational in callously destroying them for equally irrational and not
very different beliefs. The Roman Catholic Church had in the past a lot to learn
about Christianity. Perhaps to-day’s announcement of the Pope retiring may be
symptomatic of a greater humility and tolerance among its clergy. Certainly
Innocent lll and Gregory lX of the 13th century showed little
humility towards their brethren in Languedoc.

I read this book on Kindle. The
text of the book extended to two thirds of its length. The last third is largely
made up of the references of which there are 260. For the reader to access
these references requires more of a problem on Kindle than on a book in the
hand. Most of these references are quite extensive, up to ten lines or more,
and are important to the reader in understanding the main text. I would advise
the reader to check the excerpt of The Perfect Heresy on Kindle before buying
the book. It gives a very clear summary of what the book is about.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Vital Stats

Risteárd Mulcahy.

Reasons why...

As a doctor advising patients, I knew that cigarette smoking was the most addictive habit known to Man. At least I thought so until I tried to stop writing. I have written twelve books, and like the smokers, I used to suffer withdrawal effects if I had nothing to write. So, to keep my restlessness at bay, I began to write reviews of all the books I was reading and I found these exercises hugely educational. There are about 130 in all – so far! This blog records some of them , and a few other personal scribbles. Mistakes? There will be many, no doubt, and no doubt they will be mine. This is a very personal contribution to the literature and is in no way an academic text. Enjoy.